HP OpenVMS Systems

Resolving NOSUCHFILE error? (BACKUP)

During the past two weeks we have been experiencing intermittent problems
when running our nightly image backup of our system disk (DRA0). The job
will crash with the following error in the log :
%BACKUP-E-OPENIN, error opening DRA0:[]SYS$QUEUE_MANAGER.QMAN$JOURNAL_OLD;1
as
-SYSTEM-W-NOSUCHFILE, no such file
How should we get around this problem ?
Regards,
Nick Lewis

The Answer is :

For reasons which have been discussed before, a reliable restoration
of an online BACKUP of a system disk is not particularly feasible.
(Please see previous discussions of the data integrity pitfalls around
the use of BACKUP/IGNORE=INTERLOCK -- those file interlocks are there
for a reason. Specifically, see topics 2467. "No such file" errors
can also be caused by activity on the target disk during the BACKUP
-- at least some of these errors might thus be effectively spurious.)
As for the problem reported, please perform a pass of the following:
$ ANALYZE/DISK_STRUCTURE/REPAIR DRA0:
Then look for the file SYS$QUEUE_MANAGER.QMAN$JOURNAL_OLD, likely
to be relocated into [SYSLOST]. If, as the OpenVMS Wizard expects,
a DIRECTORY/FULL returns "no such file" for this file, then use the
following command to delete the file header entry:
$ SET FILE/REMOVE
If you have not already done so, add a SET NOON or similar to the
DCL command procedure -- this command cause the DCL procedure to
continue, regardless of any serious errors that might arise. (By
default, procedures tend to exit on serious errors.)